Korean companies admit skirting US visas, say they had no choice | Hacker News Reader

Korean companies admit skirting US visas, say they had no choice

ft.com

15 pointsilamont9 comments

This is insane

Successive US administrations for good reasons want manufacturing moved onshore, but they refuse to make a country-specific scheme for working visas (as exists for countries including Singapore, Canada and Australia), because it would have to go through Congress. The companies need both specific engineering expertise and construction workers who will stay until the end of the project. The only way to meet both goals is to hack the visa system.

This worked until the current administration implemented it's ICE scheme with quotas of 3000 arrests of immigrants per day (1.095 million per year).

This is the situation at not only the Georgia plant, but EVERY South Korean manufacturing facility, AND every US factory that uses South Korean manufacturing equipment.

Even if the administration declares all of these projects to be off-limits to ICE (and ICE respects that, unlikely due to their steep quotas), the damage is done. The images of Korean workers lined up against the wall and arrested is resonating deeply in South Korea as yet another humiliation by a foreign power.

The trust built over seven decades has been broken. This will seriously screw American workers and everyone involved in the US economy. Stupidity.

If Americans aren't breaking South Korean laws, in large quantities and under the leadership of large American corporations, the situation is a bit unbalanced. The trust has been broken by the Koreans. American immigration rules aren't particularly strict, compared to other nations. Certainly not as strict as in South Korea. It's not hard to obey them, and the default should be to obey them rather than be upset that they're being enforced.

As explained in the article, the Korean companies did not come to USA due to their own free will, but because they had been blackmailed by the US government to invest billions in USA.

However, after making the forced deals, USA has not provided the work visas that are needed for the completion of those projects in time, compelling the Korean companies to use visas of an incorrect kind.

I see here only trust broken by the Americans, not by the Koreans. In recent years, everybody all over the world has learned with dismay that any deal made with USA is more or less worthless, because USA may not comply with it or change its terms at any time.

There are international arbitration courts and other methods to claim non compliance. Instead Hyundai chose to break the law. Understandably, the law wasn't being enforced, so practically it made sense to do as they did. But then the public voted to elect someone who promised to enforce that very law. So Hyundai played the wrong cards, unlike American companies working in South Korea that hired locally or obtained visas.

All I can say is I hope you remember this "law was broken but not enforced" energy in the future when the pendulum swings the other way.

As an immigrant who arrived here with all the right papers stamped and signed, I've always been upset by the lack of enforcement. It's unfair when I follow the law, but other immigrants just do whatever they want.

How do you reconcile being an immigrant coming to a country. And then supporting the foundational document of the country be changed or overruled by decree (14th amendment) against the will of the populace . And then whine about the law and papers?

If we should be deporting anyone it should be immigrants like you how seem to want to change the culture and meaning of "American"

Nice article about the "Honesty Tax" that you are complaining about: https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/the-honesty-tax

https://archive.today/smt2B

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